


Bitter Work

by penumbralsock



Category: Original Work
Genre: Corporal Punishment, Hand Jobs, Humiliation, M/M, Objectification, Overstimulation, Rape, Sexual Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 12:51:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15119771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penumbralsock/pseuds/penumbralsock
Summary: Luke believes he's going to spend the summer in residence at a prestigious slave-training firm as an intern. He's half right.





	Bitter Work

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sattsuma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sattsuma/gifts).



Luke stared down at the surf, turquoise striated with white foam, from the vantage of the aerial coach. The conveyance floated through the air like a bubble of soap, invisible but for the faint mother-of-pearl sheen of its walls, a cataract of rainbows between its passengers and the vista beneath them.

Luke had never seen the bay this way, nor the city that encircled it like a choker of concrete and glass. His parents were educated, and lived comfortably enough by the standards of the professional guilds – and might have been better off still if not for Luke – but they were of the class of people who walked the streets of the city, not those who flew above them. Luke had once made a model of an aerial, a tiny bubble of galvanic glass that wobbled two centimeters above a vitrorepulsive plate and impressed his physics tutor, but he’d never seen the real thing up close.

His traveling companion appeared less impressed. A dark-haired, tan young man who’d nodded nervously to Luke as they boarded and then busied himself studying something on his tablet, he’d scarcely looked up since. His lips moved occasionally, mouthing words Luke couldn’t catch.

Perhaps sensing the scrutiny, he looked up. Quizzical brown eyes met Luke’s.

“Hey,” Luke said. “I’m Luke.”

“Alex Singh. We’ve met. We had finite methods together last year.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Luke said. “I was pretty focused on what was happening in tutorial. The Regent could have sat down next to me in that class and I wouldn’t have noticed. I thought it was going to tank my scholarship. My parents would have ended my life.” Probably by reacting with regretful sympathy, at which point he’d have expired spontaneously out of shame. Luke knew that his parents had gone deep into debt to give their unauthorized second child the life of a free citizen, and if they never talked about it, he still felt the burden of that sacrifice.

Alex smiled. “You’re here, so you must have done pretty well. What department?”

“Unassigned,” Luke said, shaking his head. “So probably routine support. I thought I was on track to make it into Research and Development. My girlfriend – she’s a genius – just started there. I guess I just missed it.”

“That’s unusual, isn’t it?” Alex asked. “You said you’re on scholarship, and the Corporation doesn’t hand those out to just anybody. Your scores must be really good. Maybe you’re being given an assistantship, something in Executive.” Internships with the Corporation lasted three years: two ran concurrently with the last two years of university, which they paid for; the third year, upon graduation, was full-time and usually followed by a job offer. Assistantships to Executives were usually reserved for second- and third-year interns.

“Maybe,” Luke said dubiously. “My brother might never speak to me again, though, if I go to Executive. You should’ve heard him when I got my University admission.” He grimaced.

“Your brother?” Alex asked, a tiny crease appearing between his eyebrows.

“Yeah. I’m a second child. I don’t know how my parents managed the fees, but here I am. Jaron says the University and the scholarship system are tools of economic oppression, meant to keep the Corporation’s boot on the necks of the Unincorporated Guilds by conscripting talent before it enters the workforce. That’s a direct quote, by the way.” 

The Corporation had all but built the city, lifting it from obscurity into economic and political prominence, but the wealth it brought had given birth to an independent class of professionals within a generation. The Corporation and the Guilds had been in a tug-of-war ever since, but the truth was that it had never been much of a contest. Jaron wasn’t the kind of guy to give up on a fight just because it had been lost before his grandparents were born, however. He was always haranguing their parents, who grew close-mouthed and grim whenever the subject of the Corporation came up. What he thought of Luke’s scholarship, and the mandatory internship it led to, didn’t bear repeating.

In truth, Luke would’ve done without that scholarship if he could have. He was no abolitionist – even Jaron’s grievance was Corporate interference with the Guilds, not the industry that sustained the city itself – and he’d take the Corporation’s money if it meant a world-class education in engineering and design. But he couldn’t help feeling a little queasy whenever he thought too hard about just what the tech built in the Corporation’s labs was meant to do. 

Jessica had no such qualms. She could look at the schematics for a groundbreaking neuro-stim device and see only a breakthrough in biotechnical integration. Or just as likely, launch into a speech on how galvanic rather than electrical current would allow for a much stronger stimulus without causing nerve damage. Sometimes her single-mindedness disconcerted Luke, but mostly it turned him on. Jessica was brilliant, and admired genius wherever she found it. Even so, Luke would rather build a better aerial coach than a better pair of handcuffs, and he meant to take his Corporation-funded education to a firm in one of the Free Cities as soon as his contract allowed it.

Or so he hoped. One thing his brother was right about: the Corporation had a way of holding onto people.

“So what about you?” Luke changed the subject, eyeing the bags at Alex’s feet with curiosity. “I didn’t know there were residential internships.”

“Behavioral,” Alex answered.

“Oh. That’s, uh, wow. Behavioral.”

“Go ahead, you can say it,” Alex grinned at him.

“Okay. So while I’m fetching coffee or whatever, you’ll be, like, beating some poor bastard with a riding crop all summer?”

“Whereas you’d rather build a robot to beat the poor bastard with a riding crop, right?” Alex countered good naturedly. “But seriously, it’s not like that. As an intern, I’ll get assigned to a single case, one I can really focus on. That’s why first-year internships in Behavioral are residential. Behavioral science is about really getting someone, understanding their psychology. A trainer who resorts to pain compliance,” he said like he was quoting something, “has failed to establish an operative relationship with the subject.” He flushed a little, like he realized how pompous that sounded. “Sorry.” He gestured with the tablet. “I’ve been reading too many journal articles.”

“No, I’m interested,” Luke said. It was morbidly true. For the city’s underclasses, the work camps were like illness or hunger, a constant danger awaiting the destitute or unlucky. But Luke had been brought up among people neither poor enough to fear enslavement nor rich enough to own slaves, and the whole subject felt slightly unreal to him. “I guess I just don’t get, uh, why. Like, what’s the attraction?” he asked.

“Well, I like fixing things, you know?” Alex answered. “And I started out in psychology thinking I could be a therapist. Only you study psych, and you start to realize that we’re shaped by our experiences, like puzzle pieces cut out at random. And the pieces fit together imperfectly, and so society is imperfect.” He trailed off. “My friend has seizures, sometimes, and she has this dog, Lily, who alerts her when she’s going to have a fit. And this dog – you almost wouldn’t believe she’s a dog at all. Like she’s something better, more perfect. A puzzle piece made to fit.”

“Maybe you should be a dog trainer.”

“I know people aren’t dogs,” Alex said. “They’re much more complex. But as a therapist, all you can do is try to help a broken piece fit into a broken puzzle. A behavioral trainer controls the experiences that shape his or her subjects, and makes people who aren’t broken. Makes them perfect.”

“That’s ...” totally fucked up “... pretty cool,” Luke told him. 

They lapsed into silence. The blue-green of the bay gave way to manicured lawns, and soon the aerial descended, docking amid the marble and glass edifices of the Corporation’s central campus. 

Passing through the coach’s selectively permeable wall felt strange, like it should have left Luke soaking wet. A harried-looking man ushered them into the nearest white building and into an office marked Reception.

“New interns?” inquired a smiling woman, motioning them to scan their identification on her tablet. “Alexander Singh, first-year, Behavioral. Welcome. And ... that’s odd,” she said, frowning at Luke. “I don’t see an entry here for you. What’s your name, dear?”

“Luke Gardner. I’m unassigned.” 

“There should still be –” she pulled up another database. “Ah. Here you are,” she said briskly, motioning someone over. “You’re an acquisition, not an intern. Dave and Marco here will escort you downstairs for assessment.” A hand landed on his shoulder.

“An acquisition?” Luke asked, pulling away from the grip on his shoulder. Or trying to. The man’s hand tightened as he tried to shrug it off. “What do you mean? I’m a University student. I’m supposed to be starting my internship.”

“It says here that you’re a third-year engineering student,” the receptionist read, and smiled encouragingly at his nod. “That’s good, you could tutor. Might help land you a domestic placement.”

The men she’d called Dave and Marco were on either side of him now, holding his arms. 

“A domestic placement?” Did she mean? No. “I’m sorry, I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m an unassigned intern. I sat the placement exams, filed an application with Development. I’m not ...” he couldn’t say it.

“Not a slave, dear?” The word was a plunge into ice-cold water. His breath caught and his pulse raced. 

“No. I’m not – I mean, I haven’t – I’m not a criminal, or a debtor. My parents are Rachel Gardner and Neil Morris. They’re Guild members. I’m a citizen. There’s been a mistake. Alex, tell her.” But Alex was just looking at him, pity in his eyes. Luke flinched from that expression. “Please!” he said, voice cracking. “This is all a huge mistake.”

Wordlessly, the woman pulled up another document on her tablet, held it up so that he could see. It was his certificate of birth, dated twenty years ago. At the bottom was a notation. Second birth: remand without lien.

“No,” Luke said. “That isn’t – my parents, they paid. I’ve lived with them all my life.”

“In non-criminal cases, that’s sometimes what happens,” she told him. “Your parents should have explained the situation to you. You shouldn’t have had to find out today, like this. But, well.” She shrugged, sighing. “Sometimes that happens, too.”

“Please,” Luke said. “Just call my mom and dad. Tell them what’s happening. This isn’t supposed to – there’s been – they’ll call a lawyer, get the records, sort it out.”

“Okay,” she said gently. “I’ll call and tell them you’re here. I promise.” Her resigned expression was almost enough to convince him. They would sort it out. They had to. 

Numbly, Luke let Dave and Marco – were they guards? Security? – lead him down a flight of stairs and into what looked like an examination room, white and antiseptic, at the end of a long corridor. A middle-aged man in a doctor’s coat hastened in a moment later and smiled at him. Why was everyone smiling?

“You must be Luke. I’m Doctor Berger and I’m going to conduct a quick examination before you’re off to Behavioral. If you’d kindly disrobe.”

Luke stared at him mutely.

Dave or Marco – he still didn’t know which was which – gave his shoulder a sharp shove. “Strip.”

Slowly, Luke unbuttoned his shirt, shrugged it off, and toed out of his shoes. His undershirt came off next, followed by belt, trousers, and socks. He looked up at Dr. Berger, who gestured impatiently. Flushing, Luke stripped off his underwear and stood naked, cool air raising goose bumps on his skin.

Dr. Berger was brisk and professional. He measured Luke’s weight, height and blood pressure and drew three small syringes of blood. He tested Luke’s reflexes, palpated his abdomen, and listened to his breathing. Luke did his best to ignore Dave and Marco’s presence during the brief testicular examination.

“Very good. Now, if you could lie down on the table on your stomach, please,” said Dr. Berger, patting Luke on the shoulder.

“I – I don’t think I’m comfortable with that,” Luke said, backing up slightly.

“We’re nearly done. Just lie over the table, please.”

“No, I’m not –” 

Dr. Berger gestured curtly. Marco and Dave grabbed Luke’s arms from both sides and began to drag him, kicking, toward the table.

“Stop! Please. You can’t. I’m not a slave, and I don’t consent to this,” he told them. His struggles weren’t doing anything to slow his progress toward the table. He had to try reasoning with them. “Think about this. If you’re right, you can do this later, when you know for sure. If you’re wrong and I’m not a slave, this is assault. You could go to jail. You could end up slaves yourselves.” 

“We’ll take our chances,” said one of the guards in a Free Cities accent. Marco, Luke guessed. Strong hands bent him over, pinned him to the table like a moth mounted beneath a glass plate. Berger was putting on a pair of pale blue medical gloves.

Luke kicked out as hard as he could, felt his heel connect with something yielding. He kicked again. Someone grunted and swore. “Get the damn cuffs on him!” Cold metal closed around his left ankle, then his right. There was a soft galvanic hum, and his legs snapped against the base of the table as if magnetized there, which they probably were. 

Dave came around the table and made a grab for his arms. Luke swung a fist and caught him a glancing blow on the right cheek. The man reeled back, swearing sulfurously. Dodging the next wild swing, he seized Luke’s forearms in a vice-like grip and held them still while Marco shackled him with two more cuffs like silver bracelets, seams melting away as they closed on his wrists. A second humming sound, and Luke’s arms were jerked taut, wrists secured at the far edge of the table. 

A fifth circle of silvery metal, larger but narrower, closed around Luke’s neck. He had a second to observe that the collar was oddly warm before every nerve in his body caught fire.

He howled and thrashed, pulling futilely against the restraining cuffs. Then, between one heartbeat and the next, the pain vanished as abruptly as it had come.

Dr. Berger was looking down at him with a grim expression. “The first lesson you will learn here, Luke, is that you are not to strike a member of the staff, or any free citizen. Ever. Good slaves have been sent to the work camps for lesser offences.”

The pain returned twofold, and this time it stretched on for what felt like an eternity. Luke screamed until he couldn’t draw breath, vision darkening around the edges. It left him sobbing and trembling all over, face pressed into the padded surface of the table as he fought for breath after frantic breath.

“Are we clear on the rule, then?” Dr. Berger’s voice came to him from the bottom of a deep well. Luke raised his head, nodded frantically. He didn’t trust himself to speak. “Very good! I think one more dose will serve to underscore my point, don’t you?”

“No,” Luke forced out, voice unsteady with panic. “I won’t hit anyone, I swear. Please.” 

But the doctor wasn’t looking at him. “That’s odd,” he said, tapping the screen of his tablet and frowning. “You don’t feel anything at all, do you? No, you were not subtle. Ah, well. I’ll just have to trust that you’ve taken the lesson to heart. You’d better hope so, anyway. You don’t want to experience a reprimand in Behavioral.”

The rest of the examination was humiliating but mercifully brief. Dr. Berger’s finger slipped inside him, prodded around a bit as Luke squirmed, then was gone. The doctor gave the inside of Luke’s thigh an absent-minded pat, as if in reassurance.

“There, now. Nothing to it. Was that worth all that fuss?” Dr. Berger shook his head. “Dave and Marco will take you down to Behavioral.”

Another faint hum heralded Luke’s release from the examination table. Scrambling up, he turned toward his discarded clothing only to find it gone. Instead, Marco held out a white shirt and shorts made out of a thin, breathable fabric, soft against his skin as Luke pulled them on.

Behavioral turned out to be a walled cloister deep within the building. A handsome, dark-skinned young man in a white uniform identical to Luke’s lay stretched out on the grass of the open-air courtyard, head pillowed in the lap of a woman clad in black shirt and pants, the Corporation insignia stitched in gold at her breast. The man wore a collar and manacles just like Luke’s. He was smiling up at the woman.

Dave and Marco didn’t pause for introductions. Marching Luke down the columned walkway that formed the courtyard’s perimeter, they stopped at one of a series of doors, indistinguishable from any other as far as Luke could see. A hand between his shoulder blades gave a small shove and sent him stumbling into a room full of padded benches and tables with dangling cuffs, like something between a gym, a doctor’s examination room, and a torture chamber.

The woman from the courtyard appeared in the doorway. She was very tall and quite thin, but Luke had the feeling she could’ve snap him in two without breaking a sweat. Her hair was pulled up in a tight bun, and at the moment, her lips were pressed together in a thin line. “I am Anaïs Williams. You will address me as Trainer Williams or ma’am. I supervise all the trainers here in Behavioral as well as their subjects. Ordinarily, I would welcome you to your new home. Under the circumstances, however, I will offer you a choice. You can obey your trainer and all Corporation personnel, and you will receive exemplary training followed by a comfortable placement. Or you can repeat your disgraceful performance in Medical, in which case I promise your stay here will be as brief as it is unpleasant. Your designated behavioral specialist will be here shortly. While you wait for him, you can consider your choice.” She gestured curtly to the Marco and Dave and swept from the room.

Strong hands on his shoulders forced Luke to his knees. They wrestled his arms behind his back and secured them, wrists crossed between his shoulder blades, pulled tight just short of the point of pain. They left him alone. 

Experimentally, Luke tried to stand, but the cuffs on his ankles stuck to the floor as if bolted there. His wrists were held no less firmly, not just pinned together but actually fixed in place, so he couldn’t relax his arms or lean forward or back. 

The muscles in Luke’s arms and back were starting to burn. Seeking a distraction, he turned his attention to his surroundings. His eyes lit first on an elevated chair fitted with stirrups and a series of leather straps. Luke didn’t want to think about what happened to people in that chair. Hanging on the wall behind it was an array of instruments, few of which he recognized and none of which he liked. He fixed his gaze firmly on the tile floor and did his best to think of nothing at all.

Minutes passed before a sound at the door drew his attention. Alex stood just inside the room, looking down at him. He was now dressed in the same black uniform Trainer Williams wore.

Luke drew a slow breath. “Your assignment. It’s me, isn’t it. I’m the dude you’re hitting with the riding crop.”

“I told you,” Alex said, “there is no riding crop.” Luke pointed with his chin and Alex’s eyes went slightly round. “Uh, okay. So maybe a strap, a cane, and a paddle.” He paused. “Several paddles. But no riding crop. Shit, are those nipple clamps?” 

“How the hell –” 

“Forget it. It was a rhetorical question.” He took a deep breath. “Yes, Luke, you are my assignment. My job is to help you, not hurt you.” He crouched down, and Luke found himself looking directly into earnest green eyes. “You’re going through a difficult transition. I want to help you adjust, to accept your new circumstances. To be happy, even. Or at least content. Not only because your acclimatization will reflect on me professionally, but because I like you. I want you to do well.”

Luke broke eye contact and addressed himself to the floor. “Did you memorize that speech out of the fucking company handbook?” No answer. “You aren’t my friend. You’re here to train me. To make me into a slave.” He looked up to find Alex still wearing his empathetic face. He probably practiced it in front of a mirror. 

Alex rocked back on his heels, silently regarding him with that fixed, too-patient expression. Seconds passed. Luke shifted uncomfortably, trying to ease the pain in his shoulders. “Can you at least let me out of these cuffs?” he asked plaintively.

Alex frowned. “Does it hurt? I can’t, actually. I don’t have an admin tablet. Support is supposed to drop it off soon.” He sat down. “I’m glad you asked, though. It’s important that you learn to look to me when you need something, to accept dependence in parts of your life where you are accustomed to independence. Trust is the first pillar of a working relationship.” Apparently they were back to the handbook.

Alex scooted behind him, and Luke flinched at the press of hands against his back. Ignoring the reaction, Alex began to knead his shoulders, soothing away the burn of tortured muscles. Unwillingly, Luke found himself leaning into the touch, pathetically grateful for the sudden absence of pain. Alex’s hands slid to his biceps, fingers tracing small circles of warmth through the thin fabric of the white shirt with just the right amount of pressure.

He shivered as Alex’s hands slid lower, trailing down his ribs to work at his hips, the small of his back, his – 

“Don’t,” Luke blurted. The motion didn’t stop. “Dude, I don’t want ... c’mon.”

Alex’s hands stopped moving but remained where they were. “You were right earlier when you said I’m not your friend. Friends are equals,” Alex said. “But you’re wrong that I am going to make you into a slave. You’re already a slave, Luke.” His grip tightened. “I’m going to make sure you’re a good slave.”

Alex pressed forward until Luke was all but sitting in his lap. His right hand snaked around to rest on Luke’s stomach, then slipped lower, beneath the waistband of his shorts. Lower. 

Luke bucked wildly in Alex’s grip, but the cuffs restricted his range of motion and limited the effectiveness of the maneuver. Alex looped his other arm around Luke’s waist, holding him still. The hand between Luke’s legs began to stroke, slow and firm.

“Please,” Luke said. It came out as a whine. “I – I don’t. I’m not ... I have a girlfriend,” he finished lamely.

“You don’t have a girlfriend. Not anymore,” Alex told him, breath tickling the back of Luke’s neck. “A slave doesn’t have a girlfriend. Or a sexual orientation, for that matter.”

Alex kept stroking. Luke squeezed his eyes shut, focused on keeping still, on ignoring the touch, resisting its implicit demand of his body. It wasn’t hard to do. At that moment, sex was about the furthest thing from Luke’s mind. The warm pull of Alex’s fingers was mechanical, mere friction. It meant nothing. Luke’s mind drifted.

“Uh, thanks,” Alex said loudly. “Just leave it on the table.”

Luke’s eyes flew open. A weedy, bespectacled man was standing at the door with a tablet, surveying the scene before him with an amused twist to his mouth. Luke’s first, irrational impulse was to call out to the man for help. His second was bone-deep mortification. 

“You’re the new intern? You sure don’t waste any time. Quite the work ethic,” he said. His eyes raked Luke. “Not bad at all, if you like ‘em blond.”

“N-no, I guess not,” Alex replied. Surprisingly, he sounded more than a little flustered. 

The man gave Alex a quizzical look as he set the tablet down on a small table standing at the edge of the room. “Medical called down,” he said. “Said the collar might be malfunctioning. New prototype, I guess. Development will send someone to look at it tomorrow.” He winked at Luke on his way out the door.

Alex’s hand hadn’t interrupted its steady rhythm once during the exchange, and Luke couldn’t have said whether the wash of heat that suffused his face came from humiliation or anger. A week ago – an hour ago! – what Alex was doing to Luke would have been criminal assault. Anywhere outside of this room, surely, the man would have been shocked at the scene he’d walked into, would have helped Luke, would have summoned a constable. Here he made feeble jokes.

Outrage and embarrassment alone should have kept Luke’s body in check. But Alex was patient, his grip warm, firm, and unrelenting. Soon Luke felt himself beginning to respond. Arousal was a physical inevitability, and it worked on Luke’s body with the ruthlessness of gravity. Acceleration. 

Luke squirmed, his breath coming faster. Alex’s grip tightened, rhythm quickening, his own breath ruffling Luke’s hair. “Stop fighting,” Alex told him, and Luke shuddered, relaxed. A moan escaped his throat, and his whole body tensed, back arching as far as it would go, before he came in Alex’s hand and went limp.

“Good boy,” Alex whispered, fingers going still. He rested his chin on Luke’s shoulder. “You’ve obeyed for the first time.”

“Fuck you,” Luke said. It came out hoarse.

Alex stood up, wiped his hand on the front of Luke’s shorts, and retrieved the tablet. Luke groaned in relief as the pressure eased off his ankles and wrists. Laboriously, he stood up, stretching. And yelped as his wrists were hauled straight up into the air, pulling him up to stand on his toes.

“You wanted to be in Development, right?” Alex asked with a faintly mischievous expression. “You’ll love this.” 

Moving to stand beside Luke, he held the tablet up so he could see. The outline of a human figure was rendered in three dimensions against a blue background, red circles centered on both upraised wrists. Alex tapped the grayed-out circles at the figure’s ankles and caused them to light up red, then used his middle and index fingers to move the circles in opposite directions. Luke gritted his teeth as his legs were drawn inexorably apart to mirror the form on the screen, then gaped as Alex swiped upward and Luke was pulled along with the rendered portrait to hang in midair, suspended as if frozen in a jumping jack.

“The cuffs are galvanically attuned to a matrix of magnets set into the walls, ceiling, and floor of the training room,” Alex explained cheerfully. “Outside, they can bind to one another and to a few surfaces outfitted with single magnets, but in here, they hold their position pretty much anywhere. Look at this!” 

He pulled up another menu and scrolled through a series of tiny figures arranged in a variety of poses, selected one and tapped. Luke found himself dangling like a sloth from an invisible tree branch, limbs drawn upward as his body formed an odd kind of sling. Another tap and he was spread-eagled, staring up at the ceiling above him.

“Amazing,” Luke growled. “Really technically inspiring. How about you put these things on and give me the tablet, so I can really get a feel for the ingenuity of it.”

Three more aerobatic contortions, presumably to show Luke who was in charge. He hung in a dangling V-shape, then righted himself and doubled over, as if stretching to touch his toes in mid-air. A final selection, icon outlined in an angry red, twisted Luke painfully into a shape he could only describe as a human pretzel. At length, Alex set him down on the ground. Sourly, Luke rubbed at the skin of his wrists, chafed where his weight had pulled against the cuffs. 

“I guess they’re not too comfortable, huh?” Alex asked with mock-solicitude. “It’s a good thing we have all these, then.” He indicated the padded tables and benches. 

Luke clenched his fists, then unclenched them. Only the memory of the Dr. Berger and the medical bay kept him from taking a swing at Alex. He put on a bland expression.

Alex watched him for a moment, then nodded to himself. “So you can keep your temper. That’s important. I heard what happened down in Medical.” He tilted his head. “I think you panicked, earlier. That’s both good and bad. Defiance can be curbed, but panic is unpredictable.” He took a step closer and put a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “You should know that there are nearly a million slaves in the work camps, and only a few thousand here in the city, serving as domestics.” His eyes bored into Luke’s. “The Corporation cannot place a violent slave, or one who has injured a citizen, in a private household.” His grip tightened. “I have seen the camps, and you will not go to one. I won’t allow it. Do you understand?”

Slowly, Luke nodded, and that appeared to satisfy Alex. Releasing him, he put on a cheerful expression. “Good, then. I’m off to dinner. Don’t go anywhere while I’m gone. You won’t like what happens if you try leaving the room without permission.”

“Wait!” Luke called. Alex stopped just short of the door. “When do I get to eat?”

“Hungry?” Alex asked. “I would be, after the day you’ve had. When I was a little kid and threw a tantrum, my parents would send me to bed without supper. Your behavior in Medical today certainly qualifies as a tantrum. You’ve also sworn at me twice in the last hour. How does a childish punishment for childish behavior sound?”

“Like petty bullshit,” Luke answered mutinously. In truth, he felt like his empty stomach might gnaw through his spine.

“Strike three,” Alex said. “Swear at me once more tonight and you can skip breakfast.” He paused. “Nothing to add? Smart. I’ll see you in an hour or so.” He left.

Luke slammed his fist into the wall and winced, shaking bruised knuckles. Then he did it again, harder. Again. Luke knew he was being stupid. He needed to lash out and break something, and right then he was his only safe target.

Luke drew in a shuddering breath and decided he’d already been hurt more than enough for one day. He picked up Alex’s tablet and examined it, but it remained dead. Probably locked to Alex’s biokinetics.

The back wall of the training room was partially obscured by a standing screen, which turned out to conceal an aperture into a surprisingly well-appointed bedroom. A large and luxurious-looking bed dominated one wall, a much smaller pallet situated at its foot. Luke had a feeling he knew who would be sleeping on the cramped little pallet. Dressers standing opposite the bed held white and black uniforms. A window looked out onto an exterior garden, and a door opened onto a spacious bathroom holding a shower, tub, and two sinks. Luke seized the opportunity to wash and change. 

Lying down on the bed, Luke briefly entertained the idea of smashing the bedroom window and running off into the night before reluctantly admitting to himself that he wasn’t quite that stupid. He lingered a bit longer over a violent fantasy involving Alex, or possibly Marco, and a large shard of broken glass. 

At length a noise from the other side of the screen recalled him to reality, and he entered the training room to find Alex returning with a laden tray. A faint fragrance filled the room, and Luke’s stomach growled hopefully.

“Change your mind?” he asked in what he hoped was a blasé tone. “Or did you just decide dinner would be more fun if you could eat it in front of me?”

“Actually,” Alex said, his face flushed, “I kind of got in trouble. It turns out I’m not supposed to punish you by withholding food. It screws with your diet.”

Hilarity bubbled up in Luke’s chest. Alex could torture, beat, or rape him, and the Corporation would call it no more than discharging his professional responsibilities. But bed without supper? It was evidently a bridge too far. 

“That’s a shame,” Luke said. “And I have to admit, I’m a little bit disappointed that your mania for the employee handbook seems to have overlooked a page or two. Are you fired? Should I go home while Personnel hires your replacement?” 

He reached for the tray, but Alex stopped him with a hand against his chest. 

“The good news, from your perspective, is that I’m not fired. That should come as a relief, seeing as how I’m pretty sure any other trainer in this building would’ve skinned you alive by now.” Alex set down the tray – Luke eyed it mournfully – and took a step toward the center of the room, pushing Luke in front of him. “The bad news,” two more steps “is that I am now under strict instructions to punish you by Corporation-approved methods as sanctioned in the employee handbook.” Another step, and Luke felt himself bump up against one of the training room’s many sinister apparatus. Alex snapped his fingers. “Bend over that.”

Luke eyed the thing dubiously. It was a bit like a three-tiered rectangular stool, draped in leather straps of varying sizes. He hesitated, looking back and forth between Alex and the apparatus.

“We can use the cuffs, if you’d prefer,” Alex said ominously. “I thought you might be more comfortable lying across something solid.”

In a choice between the weird stool and the weird cuffs, solid matter came out the hands-down winner. Luke knelt on the lowest of the three padded tiers, draping his torso over the highest and broadest, which also canted gently downward so that his shoulders angled slightly toward the floor, his hips toward the ceiling. He rested elbows and forearms on the far tier, between the other two in height. Luke shivered as Alex tightened the straps to hold him in place. He groaned in protest when he felt Alex tug the white shorts down to his knees.

Ignoring Luke’s sub-verbal objection, Alex moved to consider the collection of unpleasant implements hanging from the wall. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Uh, I think I remember someone telling me that a trainer who resorts to beating the crap out of people has failed to establish appropriate rapport with his victim, or something like that. Also, can we seriously not do this over my shorts?”

Alex eyed him balefully. “I’ll take the rap for dysfunction if you will. And no, we seriously can’t. Nothing here jump out at you?”

“Is there a feather duster somewhere on that wall?”

Alex selected a thick black leather paddle and gave it a quick swing. It looked pliant, sort of like a cross between a paddle and a strap. Apparently it met with his approval, because he hefted it and knelt down in front of Luke.

“Here’s how this is going to work,” he said, absently rubbing Luke’s back. “I’m going to paddle you for a bit, and we’re going to talk about you hitting people.” Alex’s mouth quirked a little, which Luke took to mean that he wasn’t entirely deaf to the irony. “When I think you’ve gotten the message, we’ll take a little break and you can have dinner. Then we’ll get back to work and discuss your language and disrespect more generally. Sound good?”

“Um, no? Do I actually get to vote?”

“I’m afraid it was a rhetorical question,” Alex replied. 

“You seem to ask a lot of those.”

Alex stood, and Luke felt cool air stir against the bare skin of his ass. Followed by the differently cool sensation of leather. Alex tapped a couple of times as if lining up his shot, then brought the paddle down with a sharp crack.

“Ow,” Luke said, not entirely sincerely.

“Did I hurt you?” Alex asked quickly. “Was that too hard?”

“A little too hard,” Luke answered. It occurred to him that Alex had a librarian’s build and likely no more frame of reference for corporal punishment than Luke himself possessed. It was a comforting thought.

The next blow came harder, not softer. An exceptionally athletic librarian, Luke unhappily amended.

“Way too hard,” he grated out.

“Sorry.” 

The paddle came down across his seat again, this time with a thunderous report that seemed like it should have set Luke’s teeth rattling. The pain came a half-second behind the noise, and Luke bit back a surprised yelp. 

“How was that?” 

“Fuck you.”

“Hold that thought for after dinner.”

Luke bit back a retort, and Alex seemed to take his silence as a challenge. Picking up the tempo, he settled into a steady pattern, paddle marching methodically from the top of Luke’s ass to the crease of his thighs and back up again, alternating center, left, and right. The pain seemed only to build and build, each new blow somehow adding to the burning sensation without in any way lessening the last. Luke squirmed beneath the restraints, and it was beginning to be all he could do to keep from crying out.

“Are you ready to discuss what happened this afternoon?” Alex asked, emphasizing each stressed syllable with the paddle.

“Yes,” Luke bit out, and held back a grunt as the paddle struck low. It seemed to hurt the worst in the no-man’s-land between his ass and thighs. Every time Alex hit there, Luke’s toes curled involuntarily.

“Tell me what happened,” Alex commanded, still paddling away.

“I – I kicked a guard. Marco. And I punched – the other one, Dave. I was wrong.”

“And why is that?” The paddle struck once as if to punctuate the question, then mercifully stilled.

“Because I shouldn’t hit the guards. Or Corporation staff. Or any free citizen.”

“Why not?” A single blow, like the sting of a dozen hornets.

“Because the Corporation can’t sell a slave who’s hurt someone.”

“Why else?” The paddle hit harder.

“Because I’ll go to a work camp if I can’t be sold.”

“Why else?” Harder.

“I don’t know!” Luke cried, and dissolved into incoherent sobs as the paddle resumed its work with a vengeance. Alex struck only at the tops of his thighs now, harder and faster than before, repeating the question over and over.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know! Please, I don’t.” Luke wailed, bucking fit to overturn the stool.

“Why shouldn’t you hit people?” Alex asked again, implacable, still furiously stoking the flames in Luke’s ass and thighs.

“Because you said not to,” Luke sobbed, and Alex dropped the paddle on the floor. Luke cried harder out of sheer relief.

Alex let him cry for a long minute. “Good answer,” he said at length, smoothing Luke’s hair with a gentle hand. “Next time, make it your first and only answer, okay?”

Luke nodded, the motion pushing his head against Alex’s hand. 

“And why were the other answers wrong?” Alex asked then, and panic bubbled up in Luke’s chest. Alex chuckled. “Don’t worry, my arm is as sore as your butt.” Luke sincerely doubted it. “I’d just like to know if you can work it out for yourself.”

Luke pondered the question for a while. “Because they were your answers, not mine,” he said at last.

“Exactly.” Alex beamed down at him. “When I give you an order, I may or may not tell you why I’m giving it. But whatever reasons I have or don’t have for giving the order, you only have one reason for obeying. And that’s that it is an order. Got it?”

“Got it,” Luke said with a hollow feeling in the pit of his chest. With the fog of pain receding from his thoughts, it was beginning to sink in just how much ground he’d conceded to Alex tonight.

Alex regarded him thoughtfully, perhaps coming to the same realization. Returning the paddle to its hook with what Luke considered an unduly affectionate expression, Alex returned to him bearing the tray. Hooking a chair over with his foot, he sat in front of Luke.

“Still hungry?” Alex asked. The tray held three dipping sauces set beside an array of cleverly cut vegetables of various stripes as well as small, aromatic dumplings in golden brown pastry shells. Luke’s mouth watered, but first things first.

“Let me up?” he asked, wriggling a bit over the bench.

Alex’s smirk was all the answer he going to get, Luke realized, and he gritted his teeth.

“I’ll at least need my hands,” he said.

Alex’s only answer was to dip the corner of a tiny dumpling in one of the sauces and hold it up to Luke’s lips.

“No way.” Luke pressed his lips tightly together, staring murderously at the offending pastry. 

Alex only shrugged and popped it into his own mouth, chewing slowly with exaggerated appreciation. He dipped a bright purple radish cut into a star-shape into something green and incredible-smelling and offered it up again.

Hunger overcoming pride, Luke accepted the morsel. He had to take it gingerly, almost delicately, to avoid biting Alex’s fingers. It was, he had to concede, delicious.

“That’s a good boy,” Alex said. A flash of angry defiance ran through Luke, and only an exceedingly keen awareness of his sore, red ass kept him from biting Alex’s fingers on purpose.

Alex fed him a dumpling dipped in the brightest of the three sauces next. Ginger, Luke realized, and made a face. 

“I don’t like –” Luke started, but Alex grabbed his chin and gave his head a firm little shake.

“There isn’t anything you don’t like.” He gave Luke his next three bites seasoned liberally with the ginger sauce, but avoided it thereafter. With Alex’s help, he cleaned the tray.

“Pretty good, huh?” Alex asked. He slapped Luke’s ass, momentarily reigniting the blaze and eliciting a pained yelp. “Bet that was the best meal you’ve ever been hand-fed with your bare ass sticking up in the air.”

Luke was willing to let that one pass, if only in the hope that humiliating him twice had left Alex in a good enough mood to forget Luke had been promised a second paddling after dinner.

“I seem to recall,” shit “that we were going to speak on the subject of decorum after dinner.” Alex walked back to the wall of torture.

“Alex, please,” said Luke. “Not with the paddle. I can’t, not again.”

“Who said anything about the paddle?” Alex asked. “I said we would discuss your language. I believe your exact words were ‘fuck you’.” He picked up a flexible rod shaped like a long, ridged phallus and turned back toward Luke. “You know better than to make promises you don’t intend to keep, don’t you?” 

Terror had hold of Luke again, paralyzing his vocal cords. Alex waited a few seconds for a response, then began rubbing the phallus with a clear, viscous liquid from a bottle he withdrew from the pocket of his trousers. Moving to stand behind Luke, he laid a hand on his back, and –

“Wait!” Luke gasped, “Please. I’m not ready for – if you have to – can’t you, like you did before?”

Alex frowned. “I’m going to need a verb of some kind, Luke. Are you asking me to jerk you off, like I did earlier?” 

Luke nodded. 

“Ask, then.”

“Please, Alex. Don’t ... don’t put that in me. Please jerk me off instead.”

Alex set down the phallus and leaned against Luke’s back, oil-slick hand reaching down once again to slide between Luke’s thighs, grasping, stroking. It was tight, and a bit awkward, with Luke strapped over the bench. Alex’s hand had less play, trapped between Luke’s own body and the wooden apparatus. 

“If you want this, Luke, you’re going to have to convince me of that. I don’t have all night.”

Trembling, Luke closed his eyes, pictured Jessica with him. They’d done this so many times. Perhaps she’d never been draped across his back, her every movement kindling fresh agony in his ass and thighs, but just the memory of her pressed up against him, her hand touching him, was more than enough to set his pulse racing and stiffen his dick. Luke’s breath quickened, a tremor running through his entire body. Alex’s grip tightened, pumping faster, faster, and even the agony in his backside felt amazing. Luke came against Alex with a sigh.

Alex stroked him through the orgasm. And kept stroking, and stroking, and stroking. Pulled back abruptly from the lassitude creeping over him, Luke began to make small, protesting noises in his throat, to squirm beneath Alex’s grip. 

The pain of his tortured ass and thighs came to back to him, along with all the small accumulated aches born of a long day of rough treatment and forcible restraint. They intensified, somehow adding up to a whole much more terrible than the sum of its parts.

The discomfort of the rest of his body was fast becoming nothing, however, to the unbearable friction of Alex’s hand on his dick. Luke was hard again, but it was the farthest thing from pleasure that drove him. He began to struggle against Alex’s weight, against the straps still binding him to the wooden stool; then to beg, pleading for the motion to stop, to leave him alone. 

“If you want me to stop,” Alex breathed into Luke’s ear, “ask me to fuck you instead.”

“Fuck me,” Luke choked out the words. “Anything, just stop.”

But Alex didn’t stop. Finally, Luke began to cry, shaking and sobbing through a second orgasm that felt like nothing so much as white hot lead being ripped out of him.

Alex climbed off of him and disappeared for a few minutes, probably to wash Luke’s semen off of his hand and possibly change his shirt. Luke took slow, labored breaths, and managed to pull himself mostly back together by the time Alex had returned to the room.

“Do you know why I did that?” Alex asked, thumb wiping a tear from Luke’s cheek.

“Because I asked you to,” Luke responded, voice flat in his own ears.

“Yes and no. I did it to teach you something. Growing up free, we’re all socialized to think of every interaction – especially when it comes to sex – as a negotiation. That’s something you have to unlearn, Luke. There is a time to express what you desire, but you have to understand that your desires and aversions do not make demands of other people. That can be a hard thing to learn, I think, for someone coming late to your place in life. But you will learn it.”

Alex didn’t fuck Luke that night. Instead, he released Luke from his bonds, helped him rise from the stool, and ushered him into the bedroom. Arm around his waist, Alex guided them not to Luke’s small pallet, but to his own bed, where they lay down together. Luke thought of his family, of the life that could never be his again, because it never really had been. Softly, he cried, and felt Alex’s arms wrap around him. Tomorrow, in the light of day, he would hate Alex again, and go on hating him, because hating Alex was the only part of himself that Luke was sure he could never lose. But tonight, in the darkness, he could accept comfort. He laid his head on Alex’s shoulder, closed his eyes, and slept.


End file.
